


a great miracle happened there

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/F, Hanukkah, pre outbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 23:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2829794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is Jewish geography, unreasonable amounts of fried food, underage gambling and Maxine successfully does not set anything on fire. Hanukkah at the Cohens' is not really something you can be prepared for in advance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a great miracle happened there

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raggedybearcat](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=raggedybearcat).



> A lot of loud distressed noises went into this fic, from 'how does the northern hemisphere do shabbat hanukkah if it gets dark so early???' to 'I accidentally named little Sam and Uncle Samuel the same name maybe they just aren't Ashkenazi ALL UR FAVES AREN'T ASHKENAZI' to 'this is probably a horrible mishmash of Reform and Orthodox traditions'. Forgive me. Dedicated as always to tumblr user raggedybearcat, who is responsible for all of this basically and wrote a lot of the dialogue, and basically all of the best bits of this fic. Zoe is the greatest.

“Maxie, please. I want you to meet them, and I promise there will be no Christmas carols at all.” The couch sagged slightly as Paula sat down, and Maxine looked down at her lap even as Paula handed her a steaming mug. “If you really, really hate it, we can drive home instead of staying overnight. Do you not want to meet my family? Is something wrong?”

“No, no it’s not your family, it’s — I usually sign up for extra shifts at the hospital for Christmas, since most of the other doctors want to spend it at home, and I—“ She paused, not sure how to phrase the next part. “Once I left home I didn’t have to play by anyone’s rules, I didn’t have to pretend. I love you, Paula, but I don’t want to go back to that, not even for a day.”

“Pretend?” Paula repeated, putting down her own mug of tea so she could move closer and wrap her arms around Maxine, and despite the fact that she wanted to curl in on herself at the thought of being trapped in a household that ran on careful lies, Maxine leant into her, exhaling. “You wouldn’t have to pretend. I’ve told them about you — not enough about you, I’m sure, you’ll be interrogated for your whole life story — but they know the basics. They know I love you. That’s enough for them.”

That sounded too good to be true to Maxine, but when she gave Paula a suspicious look, Paula’s face was sincere. She wouldn’t lie to her about that. “And you promise there will be no Christmas carols?”

“None,” Paula promised, kissing Maxine on the tip of her nose. “Only badly-sung songs in Hebrew that no one quite knows all the words to. You get into humming along when the old people start on the third verse, though, and the fifth one ends up being kind of familiar.”

“That sounds like an extra terrible rendition of ‘Once in Royal David City’ to me,” Maxine said, but she was smiling, and she laughed softly against Paula’s lips when she kissed her. “But I suppose I can make an exception to my carol-free existence, just for you.”

“I feel terribly special,” Paula said, and the tea on the table was forgotten.

 

* * *

 

Maxine had been able to forget exactly what she was getting herself into on the trip down to Cambridge, but as they waited at the door she found Paula’s gloved hand and held on, grounding herself with every inch where their bodies touched. Paula had assured her that Hannukah was nothing like the Christmases of Maxine’s youth, where the solemn hymns played in the background were a constant reminder that humanity was so sinful that God had to send in His own flesh and blood, and the exchanges of expressions of joy were a calculated game. Maxine had prepared for Christmas as a soldier would prepare for war, but she didn’t know how to forge armour for this.

A tiny silver-haired woman opened the door, beaming even before she saw who was on the step. “Paula!” Paula bent over to give her a hug, and Maxine saw the way she had to brace against the unexpected force of the embrace. After a moment the woman released Paula and turned to Maxine, smiling just as much. “And you’re Maxine, aren’t you?” Before Maxine could put out a hand and say it was lovely to meet her, she had been enveloped in a hug as well, and she thought that if this was what the next eighteen hours would be like, she might be able to make it through without ducking out every five minutes for a smoke. “Come inside! You must be freezing. I hope the trip up wasn’t too bad?”

“It was fine, the traffic wasn’t as—“ Maxine said, but she was cut off by Mrs. Cohen.

“Oh, is that your car out front, or did Paula buy a new one since we saw her last?”

“It’s Maxine’s,” Paula said as she took off her coat, motioning for Maxine to do the same. “Who’s here already?”

“Uncle Samuel and his family, Hannah and her husband, Joshua, Judith hasn’t arrived yet, I hope she’s not in any trouble, and I’m pretty sure Rachel’s somewhere around. And Deborah’s brought all five of her children this year, so watch your feet. They’re tiny and are very enthusiastic about their new ability to run everywhere. Paula, I’ve made up your old room, you and Maxine can stay in there — you are staying the night, aren’t you?” Paula glanced at Maxine before nodding. “Delightful! Show Maxine around, and if you see your brother, tell him to go out and buy some more chocolate coins. Miriam and little Sam found them already so we’re short some.”

“Shall do. We’ll come help in the kitchen once we’ve put down our things and found Deborah’s bunch — I don’t think I’ve seen Dan since last Pesach, maybe, and he was so small then.”

The happiness on Paula’s face as her mother went towards the kitchen was enough to banish any doubts Maxine had about coming. There was conversation coming from the rooms down the corridor, but Paula led her up the stairs to a tidy room with a double bed. The desk in the corner was taken up by a sewing machine and several half-finished projects, presumably of Mrs. Cohen’s, but the room still bore marks of a teenaged Paula — a few photographs of her posing in a school uniform with schoolmates; a trophy with a plaque Maxine couldn’t read from the doorway; a painting of a red fox above the bed, with a familiar signature in the corner. Maxine sat on the bed, trying to take in as many details of the room as she could, and Paula unpacked the bag they were sharing between them, putting their pyjamas at the foot of the bed and hanging the next’s day’s clothes in the wardrobe. She glimpsed some truly regrettable fashion choices alongside the more conservative outfits Paula had hung up; it was clearly her duty to see if photographs existed of Paula wearing that orange floral number.

“I feel like I should tell you that this is the last opportunity you have to save the game before you start the boss battle, but that’s not quite the spin I want to put on things,” Paula said, turning and sitting next to her. “No one is trying to kill you, but you will be bombarded from every angle and you may lose coins by the end of the night. You will lose coins. Probably to small children.” She paused to kiss Maxine, her hand curling around the back of Maxine’s neck. “If it makes you feel better, though, they’ll be chocolate ones.” Maxine, for her part, found that she couldn’t stop kissing Paula long enough to worry about whatever came next.

 

* * *

 

When they got downstairs, there were people everywhere, though the main congregation point seemed to be the large wooden table in the dining room where the jam doughnuts were. Paula grabbed three, which earned her a glare from a balding man who got a smile in return. She handed one to Maxine, saying, “There’ll be more for dessert, but I like to eat lots now just to disgruntle Uncle Samuel.” She nodded towards the man who’d glared at her and grinned before taking a bite of one of the doughnuts.

A woman to her left told Maxine to sit down before smiling at her a little like a predator would prey (in Maxine’s opinion, anyway). Maxine glanced over the woman’s shoulder at Paula, but she was studiously looking elsewhere, icing sugar on her lips and wearing a smirk that made Maxine suspect she knew what would happen next.

“So, you’re Maxine, Paula’s girlfriend, aren’t you? I’m Hannah,” she said, holding out her hand. Maxine shook it, wondering how she knew her name — but perhaps Paula had told her. (The truth was that as soon as Paula had casually mentioned Maxine in an email to her mother, it had become gossip and all the Cohens in Cambridge and some elsewhere had known Maxine’s name. But that wasn’t for Maxine to know.)

“Nice to meet you,” Maxine said, but she’d barely finished before the questions began.

“You’ve got an American accent — where are you from?”

“I’m from Chicago,” she began, but got no further before —

“Oh, yes, lovely place, we have relatives over there, don’t we Samuel? They always complain about the winters there, though. It’s been almost twenty years since they went over and they still find them just as hard. Did you grow up there or did you have to get used to it?”

“Oh, no, I grew up in Pennsylvania, so—“

“The Goldmans live around there! All their children went to university far away, where did you go?”

It went on in a similar fashion for far too long before Paula rescued her. Just as she thought she had almost got the hang of it, the questions started coming faster, and she felt like she was on a treadmill that she couldn’t quite keep up with. She marked the passage of time by how many times the doorbell rang and someone went to welcome yet more relatives. Her count was four and she got the impression not everyone had arrived yet.

“Maxie,” Paula said at last, touching her shoulder lightly. Maxine breathed for what felt like the first time in forever — though when she looked at her watch, she saw it had only been twenty minutes. “Come help in the kitchen. I’ve warned Mum that you’re liable to set things on fire—“

“That was once, Paula! A girl can’t set the kitchen on fire even once—“

“It was toast, Maxine. Yes, I know the toaster was faulty, but it’s a fair warning. You’re going to be grating the potatoes though, so don’t worry, you can’t set anything on fire doing that.”

Once she’d taken her leave, Paula slipped her arm around Maxine, tucking her under her chin. Despite almost all the relatives Maxine had seen so far being short and dumpy, Paula was a head taller than she was. There were other tall people about the house, but as far as Maxine could tell they were definitely outliers. “I want to assure you that was some kind of test, you know, of endurance or your worthiness to be my girlfriend, like you were a hero with Herculean tasks. But that’s just how conversations happen. It never really gets any more manageable.”

“Good to know,” Maxine said, closing her eyes for a moment. She felt safe, here with Paula in the corridor, despite the alarming number of religious family members and the unknown factor that was the dinner still to come. She’d just survived an interrogation and no one listening (and she had gathered several onlookers by the end — she’d been introduced but the names disappeared in a whirl of questions) had disapproved of any of it. She’d said nothing particularly disapproval-worthy, but she had had an entire conversation without being made to feel like dirt, which was definitely a first as far as religious holidays were concerned.

“You ready to go grate potatoes without exploding anything or injuring yourself or others?”

She opened her eyes. “I can certainly give it a try.”

 

* * *

 

Forty-five minutes, an innumerable amount of potatoes and absolutely no incidents later, Maxine and Paula were released from kitchen duty so that the candles could be lit. The sun had set several hours ago — it had nearly been dark when they arrived — but Paula had said they waited until it was actually dinnertime instead of three in the afternoon. Everyone — and Maxine saw that ‘everyone’ had significantly increased in number while she’d been in the kitchen; she had only been introduced to half these people — gathered around the table where the hanukkiah was. Mr. Cohen got out the matches and various children were hushed as the raised candle on the right hand side was lit.

“That’s the shamash, the helper candle,” Paula bent down to murmur. “You can’t use the fire of the actual hanukkah candles to light the others because it’s sacred, so you use that to light all the others instead.”

Once the shamash was lit everyone sang something in Hebrew and Maxine just had to look around. If they repeated it, like a psalm, she felt she could sort of hum the tune, but they didn’t. Mr. Cohen lit the candles and Paula grinned at Maxine. She should have known what would come next just from the grin.

This was the song she’d warned her about. The one Maxine had said sounded like an extra terrible ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. Maxine picked up the tune fairly quickly and although she had no idea what the words were, she hummed along best she could. Paula threaded her fingers between hers and sang heartily beside her, though she, like most people, petered out after the first verse. Hannah, the woman who’d interrogated her before, was still going strong, and a tiny old lady up the back was over-confidently warbling. Paula had mentioned five verses, but through some sort of agreement, they stopped at the end of the second.

“I bet that one goes out first,” Judith, Paula’s sister, said, pointing to the snot-green candle second from the right. Maxine glanced at Paula, but before Paula could explain, one of the older relatives Maxine hadn’t yet been introduced to spoke up.

“I bet that one,” he said, pointing to the shamash and giggling a little. Paula and all her siblings seemed to roll their eyes in sync. Clearly it happened every year.

“I bet you,” Paula began slowly, eyeing the candles, “that that one goes out first.” She pointed to the white one closest to the shamash. Turning to Maxine, she continued, “We bet on which one goes out first. Standard bet’s five quid, and if multiple people bet on the winning candle, they split it. Do you want in?”

Maxine looked at the candles, which flickered slightly. “We were never big on candles,” she said, “so what should I look for when I place my bet?”

“Well, the ones with longer wicks are going to burn out faster,” Paula said, pointing to the snot-green one and the white one. “The blue one has the biggest flame, though, so that’s also a contender, and that yellowy one is on a slight angle. Really, any of them would be pretty solid bets, though I'd recommend against the orange one.”

Maxine considered for a moment. This was clearly serious business. “I think the green one,” she said.

Other people placed their bets, and once it was all done and money put into a bowl — all of Paula’s siblings and most of the cousins were in — Mrs Cohen started handing out napkins. They were all still standing, so Maxine looked at Paula, frowning, until Paula explained, “You cover your head while Mum does the shabbat prayer. It’s really just going through the motions — we usually do it with hankies, but there are so many people here and I don’t think we own enough hankies for that.” She very solemnly put her napkin on her head, but her ringlets meant it looked like it was hovering precariously an inch above her head instead. Maxine knew this was serious, but she couldn’t help giggling at the sight, especially considering Paula’s impressively straight face. Paula took the napkin out of Maxine’s hands and placed it on her head with a kiss, and they turned back to the table, all without Paula cracking at all. She had probably been practising for years — or was it not inherently funny? Maxine wasn’t sure.

“Who wants wine?” Mrs. Cohen asked. Various family members raised their hands and others put forward their own cups which were decorated and had something in Hebrew written on the side. Paula leaned towards Maxine and said, "I recommend the wine -- the grape juice tastes like cough syrup," so Maxine raised her hand too, receiving a small glass of red wine instead of the white grape juice distributed to the children and anyone who didn't want wine. When Mrs Cohen had finished giving out the cups, she lit yet more candles, though these were a little bigger. Paula put down her glass and Maxine followed suit, before Paula and all the other women present used their hands to, it looked like, waft the light of the candle towards them before covering their face with their hands. Maxine was too slow on the uptake to do the wafting, but she felt bad being the only woman without her face covered, so she put her hands up and peered through her fingers. Mrs. Cohen sang by herself this time, again in Hebrew, and Maxine looked at Paula for cues. Paula looked back and gave her a smile, which Maxine thought might mean ‘don’t look so worried, you’re not doing anything wrong’ but could equally mean ‘you look cute with a napkin on your head’. With most of Paula’s face behind her hands, she wasn’t quite sure.

Once Mrs. Cohen had finished singing, the women uncovered their faces and everyone picked up their wine glasses. There was more singing by Mr. Cohen before everyone took a sip of wine. It was much sweeter than the wine Maxine was used to — more like sherry than your standard red. Yet more singing, this time over several loaves of challah. Maxine wasn’t sure how to communicate “how much more singing and standing is there going to be because I regret wearing these shoes” without sounding rude, so she just hoped there was an end in sight. Mr. Cohen broke the bread and handed everyone a piece. That, too, was sweeter than she had been expecting. Thankfully, everyone began to sit down and Maxine was able to ease her feet out of her heels. Everyone else, she realised too late, was wearing flats.

Dinner was something more familiar to her. First, chicken noodle soup, then latkes and schnitzel and various vegetables. She was interrogated again by different relatives, but this time it was less intense and the focus was scattered among other topics (what brand of challah, rumours about family friends, updates about how so-and-so was doing at university, etc.) instead of just on her. Nevertheless, when her response to 'where are you from?' was met not with further questions but with, "Oh God, I can't remember his name, whatsisname, you know, related to the Steins, son married a lawyer, they live in Chicago, you know the guy, you know him, what was his name," she felt a little like the eye of Sauron had moved on. She was Frodo and this Stein guy was Gandalf and company turning up at the Black Gates.

Mostly, she was able to just enjoy really good food with her girlfriend and a group of people who all seemed comfortable with one another. She didn't have to pay attention to what everyone was saying; she could just eat and play footsie with Paula and catch the occasional snippet of conversation. There was a lot of finger clicking and searching for names -- or specific people attached to names, since the right name often didn't help. A dark-haired woman across the table from her was waving her fork in the air at Samuel, saying, "No, not those Finkelsteins, the other ones, the ones related to Morrie Finkelstein, no, not that Morrie, the tall Morrie, with the moustache.”

Maxine suspected that no amount of context would help with that bit of conversation.

There were more jam doughnuts for dessert once everyone had eaten almost as much as they possibly could (Paula nudged her halfway through her second helping, reminding her to save space). The conversations slowed down and Maxine was able to hear more that made sense, entire exchanges sometimes. A woman she thought might be Paula's grandmother asked Rachel, "Are you still with that Toby guy? He seemed a bit flighty when he came over for Rosh Hashanah."

Maxine couldn't see Rachel's face but there was hesitation before she replied, "Yeah, I am. He's not here because--"

Her reply was cut off by someone saying the first candle had gone out. Paula and some cousin across the table gave almost identical hisses of, "Yesssssss," as they saw it was the one closest to the shamash. Maxine glared at the green candle which was still flickering in a puddle of wax. Paula followed her gaze and laughed, kissing her on the cheek. "Better luck next time, sweetheart."

 

* * *

 

"So we have two options, Maxie," Paula said when everyone had eaten more doughnuts than was sensible. "We can sit here and talk about relatives you don't know, or we could gamble with small children for chocolate of fairly questionable quality. Which would you prefer?"

"The gambling, I think," Maxine said, as if it were a choice.

"I'm so glad you said that," Paula said, "because I suspect I would have to weigh in on which Harold Stein was the one who had a hip replacement two years ago and no matter which Harold I chose, I would be picking the wrong one in someone's opinion." Louder, directed at the rest of the table, she said, "Who's up for dreidel?"

"Me!" came the chorus of every child at the table. Rachel offered to get the gelt, looking relieved as she escaped her grandmother.

Paula led Maxine by the hand to the lounge room, a trail of children after them. When Rachel had returned with more chocolate coins than Maxine had ever seen in one place, Paula asked the group, “So do we want one big game of dreidel or two smaller games?”

“Will I win the big one?” Sam asked.

“You’ll have a better chance of winning the smaller ones, since there will be fewer people,” Paula said.

“Little ones, then!”

That was apparently all the discussion that needed, and the children were separated into two groups, with Rachel supervising one and Paula and Maxine supervising the other. Rachel produced a bag of brightly-coloured plastic spinning tops with letters on each face, throwing a purple one to Paula who caught it just before it hit her on the nose.

The circle Maxine ended up playing with consisted of her, Paula, little Sam, Miriam, and three other children she didn’t know the names of. Two of those still had jam on their face and one had managed to not only get it on her nose but also in her eyebrows. Maxine couldn’t help but see that dedication to jam-spreading as admirable. Messy, but admirable.

“Maxine doesn’t know how to play, so before we start, we’re going to just do some test spins, okay?”

The children nodded and Sam said, “Paulaaaaaa, you gotta give us gelt!”

“I’m getting there, Sam, shh,” Paula said, opening a mesh bag and pouring out chocolate coins. “We’ll each start with…hmm, let’s see how many we have to go around, I suppose.” She counted it out and it came to five coins each plus six spares, which she put in the middle of the circle.

“So, my love, dreidel is entirely a game of chance, no matter how much Joshua says he can use wrist movements to influence which face the dreidel will land on. You'll catch on to which letter means what, and no one will let you get it wrong anyway, don't worry." In a quieter voice she said, "And don't worry about winning -- parve chocolate tastes like wax and sadness, we can get some Cadbury on the way home."

What followed was a surprising amount of shouting, victory laps and admonishments to little Sam that if he ate all his gelt he would lose, that's how the game worked. Despite Paula's warning, Maxine had to try some gelt, and after that felt much more enthusiastic about losing the game so she wouldn't be stuck with all the terrible non-chocolate. When she won anyway, she accused Paula of doing it on purpose, despite her girlfriend's protests that it was entirely chance.

Eventually, people began to shuffle off to bed, some going home and others being directed to old bedrooms or fold out sofas after they had done some washing up or helped fold a tablecloth. Maxine had survived, she realised, kissing Paula on the cheek as she wiped down the kitchen bench. She was even looking forward to next year.


End file.
